A FREE ILLUSTRATED CANTICLE KINGDOM PREQUEL
The Garden
That Growled.
A reluctant artist. A wizard with a borrowed sketchbook. A garden of stone creatures that will not stay still.
It’s always time for a quest.
YEARS BEFORE JOHANN FOUND THE HIDDEN ROOM
A sketchbook.
A very large stone cougar.
Rufus is the Queen’s chamberlain, a man of schedules, ceremonies, and reports due before breakfast. In private, he fills a sketchbook with dragons, lions, and creatures that exist nowhere outside his imagination.
Then the court wizard, Cornelius, borrows those drawings “as models for the new garden statues.” One morning the western garden growls at Rufus, and a stone cougar with glowing blue eyes decides he is its favorite person. The Queen’s calico cat is not amused. The Queen asks for more.
Illustrated short story · About 6,600 words · PDF · A prequel to The Canticle Kingdom; no advance reading required
WHERE THE STORY LEADS
The stone garden is only
one small corner of the kingdom.
A music box made in postwar Europe carries more than a tune. Inside an enchanted kingdom, thirteen-year-old blacksmith’s apprentice Johann and his friend Brigitte are drawn into dangerous magic and a struggle that reaches across worlds.
Begin The Canticle Kingdom
Read the prologue and chapter one free, right in your browser.
Meet Rufus
The Canticle Kingdom encyclopedia’s spoiler-safe guide to the Queen’s chamberlain.
Prefer knights and dragons?
Sir George and Count Drake is still a free Chess Quest short story, with no signup needed.